The political week on Twitter: June 18-22

With school about to let out for the year, this week's Twitter round up is designed to provide you with a topical guide to keep your brain from going to mush in the summer sun. We've searched the Twittersphere to compile an introduction to all the key school subjects. Read on to learn everything you need to know about economics, biology, and international relations.

Yes, we know those words bring back traumatic memories of frog dissections and bad fashion choices, but trust us: we promise you new knowledge guaranteed to impress even the most attractive person at your next cocktail party.

Economics: The first topic we'd like to educate you about is an essential for all would-be academics. Since we don't exactly spend our days hanging out in ivory towers, this was a topic we struggled to wrap our minds around. So, we decided to use Jimmy Carr as a case study for our economics 101 primer.

Our takeaway: interpreting rules on taxes is kind of like interpreting modern art—as long as your explanation sounds convincing it's some version of true.

Biology: This subject was arguably the most traumatic for us to dive into, as awkward memories of "Miracle of Life" videos proved a major obstruction on our path to knowledge. Lucky for us, the great institution of medical knowledge, the NHS, is always there for us to turn to for useful information about human biology. Oh…wait…

So no biology lessons for this intellectual guide. It's okay though—fluids, membranes, and viruses don't make for good dinner conversation anyway.

The final topic we decided to delve into was international relations. Since it seemed like a kind of made up subject to us, we thought we'd use a case study to wrap our minds around this discipline. Lucky for us, the Rio+20 summit offered the perfect opportunity to glean some useful information. But the more we looked into the topic, the more confused we became: we thought this was supposed to be a meeting of world leaders, yet all the major players appeared to be missing?

Oh well, at least we weren't the only ones confused about Rio+20.

Have sent Mr Clegg to Rio for an environment summit. He's so excited. He thought Rio was only a song.

So there you have it: our slightly dodgy crib notes to improve your knowledge of all the key cocktail party conversation topics. We'd threaten you with an exam, but it turns out the British government has big plans to reform those nasty anxiety-inducers. Oh well, we feel like with this introduction, your cocktail conservation is sure to reach at least an O-level.

A bit uncertain as to how changing GCSEs to O-Levels will help education any more than changing Starburst to Opal Fruits would help obesity.